Considerations for collecting data on race and Indigenous identity during health card renewal across Canadian jurisdictions
The commentary, published in the Canadian Medical Association Journal, outlines the authors’ proposal to collect data efficiently and plan to prevent potential harm of collection. Collecting data on race and Indigenous data is essential to measure health inequities related to racism while also holding organizations accountable and monitoring progress.
The authors suggest:
- Asking about race and Indigenous identity in a safe and transparent manner
- Guarding against potential bias or race corrections by providing antiracism training
- Ensuring that race or Indigenous identity is not visible on health cards
- Ensuring that data is not interpreted or presented in a way that reinforces racism and discrimination
- Legislating laws that protect communities so that health data is not used to draw broad conclusions about communities
- Supporting Indigenous, Black and racialized communities to lead data collection and analysis with data sovereignty and governance frameworks
Media coverage
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